Liquor stores sell to minors at a higher rate than other retailers, undermining a core argument used to justify the liquor store industry's virtual monopoly on cold beer sales.

An IndyStar analysis of data from excise police compliance checks found liquor stores improperly sold to minors at twice the rate of convenience stores and three times the rate of pharmacies and big-box retailers.

That contradicts liquor store claims that their stores — with prominent signs warning customers must be 21 or older to enter — are best equipped to keep booze from underage buyers.

The finding also flies in the face of what key lawmakers have been led to believe for years — and have left unchallenged.

Time and again, lawmakers have blocked legislation to expand cold beer sales to grocery stores, convenience stores and pharmacies based at least in part on the liquor stores’ narrative. It also has played into legislators' decisions to stop any efforts to allow retail stores to sell alcohol on Sunday, a move that liquor stores have feared would dilute their market share.

Sen. Ron Alting, a Lafayette Republican whose public policy committee has been a graveyard for cold beer and Sunday carryout bills for years, said the findings contradict what his predecessors have told him.

“I’ve had three chairmen that’s always told me just the opposite of that,” Alting said.

Part of the reason for the unfamiliarity may be that the compliance data hasn't been published on the Indiana State Excise Police's website since 2011. In fact, that's the only year the data has been published since lawmakers — including Long and Alting — voted to authorize the compliance checks in 2008.

In the years since, the liquor store industry has waged an effective campaign to discredit any remaining enforcement data. They've argued that their stores are targeted more often for stings and underage buyers are an easy catch for excise police, since no one younger than 21 should be patronizing their stores.

IndyStar’s analysis, however, sought to eliminate that bias by focusing not on stakeouts of patrons leaving a store but instead on routine compliance checks, which are done annually by excise police in the same manner wherever alcohol is sold.

The findings are based on the pass/fail rates of retailers from the compliance checks, using an underage buyer who attempts to make an alcohol purchase. If the sale is made, the retailer gets a citation — and a failing grade.

The analysis looked at data from 2009 to 2017, a period involving more than 83,000 compliance checks.

The results show:

Liquor stores failed their compliance checks 9.1 percent of the time.

Retailers with grocery licenses, including convenience stores, failed 4.8 percent of the time.

Sinder, whose 29 Crown Liquor stores had a violation rate of about 8 percent, said he was “not familiar” with the compliance data and that “they didn’t seem to make sense to me in light of (the fact) I have been in this business a long time.”

Instead, he pointed to the raw number of violations for selling to minors, not just citations from compliance checks. That analysis, from 2014 to the present, shows liquor stores in a more favorable light, with fewer violations than convenience stores but still more than pharmacies and big-box retailers.

Yet, the liquor store industry analysis doesn’t consider that liquor stores are vastly outnumbered by other retailers. When that is factored in, liquor stores sold to minors at nearly twice the rate of others.

The compliance issue was discussed Tuesday by a special commission lawmakers created to look at potential revisions to Indiana's alcohol laws. Jessica Allen, an attorney for the Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission, which houses state excise police, presented raw numbers on compliance violations, but offered no analysis.

"These are just flat numbers," she said. "These don’t show trends. We haven’t analyzed the data like that."

The panel was established earlier this year after lawmakers discovered two stores in the Ricker's convenience store chain had begun selling cold beer through a loophole that drew the ire of liquor stores.

The commission's recommendations could shape the legislation the General Assembly takes up in January.

Influencing the debate — lawmakers and people within the industry agree — is shifting public opinion.

Recent polls show a majority of Hoosiers favor both Sunday carryout and expanded cold beer sales. Restrictions on Sunday sales have been rolled back in most other states and Indiana will be the last state to restrict beer sales by temperature once new laws take effect in Oklahoma next year.

The liquor store industry recently acknowledged the public's shift on Sunday sales, saying it now supports such a change. What conditions it might place on that support remain unclear.

But liquor stores remain opposed to allowing other retailers to sell cold beer. They say the value of their liquor store licenses — which can cost more than $500,000 — is dependent on their sale of cold beer. They also say increasing the number of locations where cold beer is sold would make it more accessible to minors.

Legislative leaders say they're not convinced support for expanded cold beer sales is deep. And they say whatever is proposed must balance consumer convenience with public safety — especially with regard to minors.

Hutcheson said IndyStar's findings bring a welcome spotlight to compliance data, and she would like excise police to routinely publish the numbers again. Today’s compliance rates — which are above 90 percent — have improved since she began working with local law enforcement on compliance checks in the 1990s. But she said there's still room for improvement, and the lagging performance of liquor stores needs special attention.

"I would say to the liquor store industry this is a call to them to re-examine their policies and procedures and to make sure they are selling in the most restrictive environment," she said.

Many supermarkets and big-box stores use checkout terminals that force a clerk to check a buyer's identification and age before alcohol can be sold, Grant Monahan, spokesman for the Indiana Retail Council, said during recent testimony before the legislative commission.

Those retailers also use closed-circuit video surveillance, in-store security personnel and undercover shoppers.

"These stellar compliance rates are not an accident," Monahan said.

Some individual liquor store companies also performed well on compliance checks.

The Fort Wayne-based Cap 'n Cork chain of 15 liquor stores had one violation in nine years — a period that covered more than 300 checks.

And overall, liquor stores outperformed restaurants and bars, which sold alcohol to minors on 10.8 percent of compliance checks, according to the IndyStar analysis.

Still, when it comes to their competitors for carryout sales, liquor stores sold more to minors than other retailers. And some chains, such as Indianapolis-based Payless Liquors and Greencastle-based Kork & Keg, had violation rates of more than 10 percent, according to excise police compliance data.

Ultimately, the question remains whether compliance data will have any effect on the liquor store industry's decades-long stranglehold on cold beer sales, perhaps the most lucrative niche in Indiana's alcohol landscape.

Alting, who has consistently blocked efforts to expand cold beer sales and allow Sunday sales, said he will put public safety ahead of the bottom lines of various alcohol interests.

"If you are an elected official, (the priority) definitely should be the public policy and safety of citizens," he said. "In my opinion, if you think of anything different than that, you shouldn't even be serving in public policy."

Call IndyStar reporters Tony Cook at (317) 444-6081 and Robert King at (317) 444-6089. Follow Cook on Twitter and Facebook. Follow King on Twitter and Facebook.